King Croesus

This blog is about the KCCD2009 (King Croesus Contempt for Death) Trip and it's preparations. The journey will be performed on 2x 1939 Nimbus motorcycles with sidecars and ETD is April 2009. ETA is unknown, as you never know if it's a Sweet Chariot or an Infernal Machine you ride.

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

The bikes finally finished!

OBS:NORSK TEKST FØLGER UNDER.

It should have happened ages ago, but finally we’ve gotten there: The bikes are finished, or at least finished to the degree that both are able to be ran at the same time. It should also be admitted that this post should have been published ago as this happened a couple of weeks ago.

Klaus was a good boy and finished the blue bike while I was in India and rode it quite a bit. When I got home again from India a few weeks ago we received the parts for the red bike from painting, and finished this one as well.

So what have been done? Absolutely everything is close to the answer. As mentioned before, we built up new engines with exactly similar new parts, and the only thing that has not been replaced is engine blocks, oil pans, and generators. For the wheels they’ve gotten new spokes (specially made in iron), rims and brake drums/shoes. All bearings around are replaced, as well as springs in the front fork. All parts have been sandblasted and repainted. We could almost say the bikes are copies of themselves. However, the job done has been necessary to achieve 100% interchange ability between the two bikes, as well as ensuring that they at least stand a chance to finish the trip.

Paintwork was sponsored by Terje and Iver’n at Lakkteknikk, and the result was outstanding.For the rest regarding the bikes John Carlsen at JC Nimbus ( http://www.jc-nimbus.dk/ ) has been the main sponsor, and contributed with both parts and a lot of hours of work. We are extremely grateful for the help we have gotten, which has been done in a very skilful way. When first thanking people here, we’d also like to thank Tormod and Klaus, for taking the restoration up to such a neurotic level, that could possibly lock us in a the funny farm.

We’re very happy with the result and both of the bikes runs very good. They are now in a condition which probably is better than when they were new in the thirties. It’s been a damn long process, but we’re happy with the result. Only two things is left now; replace gearboxes with the special 4 speed gearboxes John has gotten made for us, and to finish up the special made sidecars.